Cross-Canada canoeists home for a rest

Carol VandenEngel and Glenn Green are home in Kingston after spending five months crossing 6,500 kilometres of Western Canada by canoe. They will pick up where they left off in spring of 2019. (Meghan Balogh/The Whig-Standard)KI

Glenn Green and Carol VandenEngel are home in Kingston after an adventurous summer.

The couple completed the second leg of their cross-Canada canoe trip in September, paddling and portaging more than 2,500 kilometres through Western Canada.

They left Vancouver on May 6, and finished this leg of the trip on Sept. 29 in Fort Francis, Ont. Last summer, they paddled from Ottawa to Nova Scotia as the first part of their mission to cross Canada by watercraft.

This past summer, the hope had been to make it to Kingston from Vancouver.

“The weather started to get a little cooler, the days were getting shorter, and it actually snowed on us the day before we finished,” Green said. “This year we wanted to complete the journey, but we took it upon ourselves not to make it a race, to enjoy the moment, to take in the sights, meet the people along the way and talk. A couple of days we were winded. Maybe we were a little too ambitious to make it back to Kingston.”

While the weather was dry and lovely for living outside, VandenEngel said the winds were often working against them.

“It was a windy year,” VandenEngel said. “A lot of provinces we travelled to, people said it was exceptionally windy. And it wasn’t always blowing the way we wanted it to blow.”

Green and VandenEngel followed the lakes and rivers through British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and into Ontario. Where there wasn’t water, they portaged — including a 300-kilometre portage over the Rocky Mountains into Alberta. For those legs of the journey, they pull their canoe on wheels.

“Canada is beautiful by the waterways,” Green said.

Paddling through the provinces provided some breathtaking and also unusual sights.

“When we were down in the valley [on the Saskatchewan River] — it’s a river that just cuts a path right through the Prairies — we were paddling through badlands and gorges,” VandenEngel said. “We had no idea that there were badlands in the Prairies. Really cool stone structures.”

The couple could go weeks at a time without seeing another human being, only crossing paths with wildlife, working their way through wild lands.

They saw seals, bears, deer, elk, mountain goats, and strange white pelicans that they had never seen before.

They even encountered a pack of wolves.

Glenn Green and Carol VandenEngel left Vancouver on May 6 on an 8,200-kilometre canoe journey back to their Kingston home. (Supplied Photo)KI

“There was a point in our trip where we were canoeing along the shore looking for a campsite for the night, and we saw a perfect sand bar with a little river and thought, ‘What a great place to camp.’ And then a pack of wolves came out of the forest scouring the shoreline. We thought, ‘We’ll just leave that to you,’” VandenEngel laughed.

While no incidents left them too worse off, they did experience a capsizing, and they got stranded on Lake Winnipeg for eight days while they waited for winds to die down enough that they could paddle on. They also experienced heavy smoke in areas due to forest fires.

“Did we ever feel in danger? No. But we did feel isolated,” Green said.

While they took cellphones with them and solar panels to charge them, much of the trip was through regions where no cell towers existed. The couple carried a device that tracked their location and could send an emergency signal in a worst-case scenario.

“At points, it was scary, especially when you’re out there and you’re vulnerable,” VandenEngel said. “You really have to make good decisions. It’s easy to say now that it wasn’t scary, but at the time it can be fearful. There is a fear factor in there.”

“The people we encountered along the journey were exceptionally interesting,” Green said.

“And so kind and giving, Canadians are. It’s really heartwarming,” VandenEngel said. “People would lend us their truck to go shopping for supplies, groceries. They’d take us into their homes and feed us these wonderful meals.”

One couple encountered VandenEngel and Green and learned of their plans for the night. They went ahead of them and paid for their campsite and firewood, and left them a bottle of wine to enjoy.

Wherever they went and whomever they met, the couple talked about the cause behind their journey, which they’ve labeled Canoe for Change.

VandenEngel and Green are paddling not only for the experience, but also to raise money for Loving Spoonful, a charitable organization in Kingston that aims to improve community food security and make healthy, fresh food more accessible to everyone in Kingston.

Their journey has raised $18,675 so far, which well surpassed their $10,000 goal.

“Loving Spoonful has grown exponentially since we started this trip,” VandenEngel said. “I think they need financial help from Kingstonians. There’s about a 15 per cent rate of food insecurity in Kingston alone. It’s meeting the needs of those people that are at risk and that need fresh, healthy food. I feel like we have to raise our goal to $25,000. Hopefully we can do it.”

VandenEngel said that Loving Spoonful is meeting a big need in Kingston.

“Having access to affordable food, it can be expensive to buy healthy food sometimes. It’s people that have low incomes that can’t always necessarily afford healthy food. With Loving Spoonful and their fresh food programs, their food rescue programs and their educational programs, they really do a lot of wonderful, good work for Kingston.”

Once their trip is complete, Green and VandenEngel will have traveled 8,515 kilometres across the country, from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans. They have 2,200 kilometres to finish next summer.

“You think it’s a great distance and that it would be overwhelming, but we just take one day at a time,” Green said. “If we go 10 kilometres or have an exceptional day and do 40, that’s great. Every day, just enjoy the moment.

“Every day was an adventure, we couldn’t wait to get up the next morning to start another adventure. Every day there’s something different, unique. Around every corner is a challenge.”